thelandfandomcom-20200213-history
Julia
Human female, born 30 Su'gin, LY 203, in First Village. Died 272. "The Book of Julia" is the eighteenth book of the O'Gas. Julia was a spirit-talker whose Book of the O'Gas includes a number of entries, the most famous of which is dated 11 Sp'yet, 251. In this entry, she wrote of a young woman (name withheld) from her district, to came to her seeking guidance on a matter apparently without precedent in the history of The Land. This young woman found herself attracted to women rather than men, and neither she nor Julia had ever heard of anyone being attracted to people of their own gender. Unsure of what to tell the young woman, Julia called upon God, who came and told her that this kind of thing was more common on other worlds, and while He had not planned for it, neither did He consider it unnatural or wrong (even if it had taken Him some time to get used to the idea). He explained a bit about having eventually realized that homosexuality unwittingly derived from biological aspects He himself had designed into the race, without anticipating this development. He originally was upset about it, but by the time He created the Land, he'd changed his mind. While the full text of His explanation is generally glossed over by non-spirit-talkers, one of the things He said in the course of their conversation was a quote from a song from Earth, which said, "Any kind of love is all right." He provided the fully lyrics to the song, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead," which Julia included at the end of that day's entry in her Book. The song has popularly been performed by any number of bands in the centuries since then, though no one got to hear actual Terran versions of the song until the development of audio recording bubbles in 402, and such recordings (provided by spirits) were not widely heard outside Sorret until the Coming of the Order, in the early tenth century. Since the publishing of the Book of Julia, this has become one of the best-known passages in the O'Gas. The passage introduced the subwords "heterosexual," "homosexual," "bisexual," and "asexual," though most of these are never used on the Land. The term "heterosexual," an orientation which applies to at least 85% of the people in the Universe (including the Land), was never needed until this point, as there had apparently never been any other orientation on the planet, at least not that anyone knew of. And so, it's still not commonly used, but rather assumed to be the case unless stated otherwise. As for the other terms, there are few cases of bisexual people and virtually no cases of asexual people; and homosexual people are usually referred to as "Julians," in reference to the Book which introduced the concept to the Land. However, there are those who dislike the term, because Julia herself was not homosexual. (There have also been those who note that some people on Earth are named "Julian," though even before the publication of the Book of Julia, there is no record of anyone on the Land ever having gone by that name, and certainly not since then. Nor is there any record of anyone since then being named Julia. The avoidance of these names should in no way be taken as any sort of distaste for the concept they have come to represent, but simply a desire to avoid confusion. Which is a shame, because most people do seem to agree that "Julia" and "Julian" are both nice names.) See also *Marriage Category:Culture Category:People